Oil Boom on Display
History Museum exhibit opens Saturday
Morgantown Dominion Post
14 September 2012
As drilling rigs spring up throughout the region in the Marcellus
shale natural gas plain, a new exhibit opening Saturday at the
Morgantown History Museum recalls the late 19th century when
Monongalia County faced an oil drilling boom.
This period in county history is highlighted in the Eureka
Pipeline Co. Exhibit, a selection of photographs donated to the
museum from the estate of a former Eureka Pipe Line Co. employee.
Drilling was done at the point where Cobun Creek enters the
Monongahela River, off Don Knotts Boulevard — roughly White Park
and University Motors.
The free exhibit is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
On display are pictures showing pump station buildings, employees
and the oil tank field along Cobun Creek.
Crude oil was first struck northwest of Morgantown on Dolls Run in
1889.
The site quickly developed into a highly productive oil field. In
1890, 24 wells produced 1,800 barrels of crude oil a day.
Eureka, chartered as a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Co. in West
Virginia, operated in Morgantown from 1890 until about 1940.
It connected local pipeline systems to trunk lines to move crude
oil from this area across the mountains to refineries in the east
using a series of pump stations and storage tanks.